Worlding a city: Twinning and urban theory

Twinning is a practice that creates formal and informal political, economic, social and cultural relationships between cities throughout the world. Despite its prevalence there has been relatively little academic attention paid to twinning. Indeed, where writers have considered city twinning they have tended to describe local institutional structures and programmes of events rather than theorising the importance of twinning as a global practice. Although producing a detailed picture of current twinning arrangements, existing research has thus glossed over the wider significance of twinning. In this paper, we argue that there is much to be gained from a more focused and sustained theoretical engagement with twinning. We do this by highlighting the twinning activities of the city of Manchester (UK), drawing out two key dimensions of twinning, namely, hospitality and relationality, which reveal twinning as a symptomatic urban process. In doing so we signpost the important contribution that research into twinning can make to broader debates within urban theory.